Description of the influence of your early schooling. What do you remember about your elementary and middle school experiences? What did you learn that has had a lasting influence? Who were your most influential teachers and/or caregivers? Why?
I feel that my early schooling, was overall a positive experience. For the most part, I went to school with the same people from kindergarten through eighth grade, which made me feel much more comfortable in some ways, but nervous in others. One downside of going to school with the same kids is if you did something embarrassing or went through a phase in one grade people were likely to make you miserable about it in years to come.) My school district was known to be fairly good for a public group of schools, and I never really experienced learning in another school district because I never moved. Luckily I was always a pretty good student, but I preferred reading,writing, and history to math, science, and technology. Even from a young age I could tell if a teacher hated his or her job or if the person had a natural gift in working with children and going above and beyond to help them succeed. With encouragement from these motivated teachers, I was able to thrive while getting my early education which created the building blocks that were essential to my later education.
I attended Richmond Elementary school from kindergarten to fourth grade, and felt very at home there. In kindergarten I had two senile old women for teachers who were mean and yelled at us for talking. They once made me so terrified that I pretended to be sick to avoid going to school. Another time during recess one of them yelled at me to stand by the wall (as a punishment) when I had no idea what I had done wrong but was too scared to ask. However, besides having teachers who hated children, I liked kindergarten. We played a lot and did more art projects than I could count. In first grade I had a teacher who was young and it was her first year teaching. We began writing and reading more, as well as doing some simple math. I handled the work fairly well. We also got to have library as one of our subjects, which helped fuel my interest in reading. About once or twice a week, the librarian would read us a book she had chosen and show us the pictures, and I was sold. I began reading on my own, not long books at first but anything that had a good looking cover I picked up and read. My competitive nature helped me that year, because I saw my best friend being praised for doing excellent work, and that made me work harder too.
In second grade I had a teacher who was a little snippy but I never had a problem with. She began teaching us multiplication tables and having us memorize our 0-12 times tables. I had a little more trouble with this, but I managed. My third grade teacher loved animals and had tortoises and a few other pets in her classroom. She got me really excited about animals, and interested in science. Once we each got a caterpillar and we watched them over a period of weeks transition from cocoon to butterfly. I loved that teacher, but she pushed us really hard and I began to get stressed out with the workload that was being piled up. In fourth grade I had one of my favorite teachers. She would read to us and draw diagrams of the setting of books on big poster boards. We would have spelling bees and I was rarely uninterested in the class. I was in a special math class in fourth grade, probably due to my poor performance in the previous year. I never thought that it was a bad thing, just that I needed a little extra help. At least until one boy started making fun of us, calling us special needs which hurt my feelings and made me question my intelligence. Was I really stupid when it came to math like he said? And while I never felt like I was good at math later on, I knew it was not stupidity that was the cause. Some things simply come naturally to people, and others require extreme effort.
Once I graduated from elementary school and moved on to middle school, things were totally different. We had to get up earlier and change classrooms when the subjects changed. In fifth grade I received a C in math and I was horrified. I knew I was better than that, so in sixth grade I still struggled but was able to keep my grade at a B. Also, in sixth grade one of my teachers decided that I was her favorite, for what reason I have no idea. But I did not like it because some of the other kids started thinking I was stuck up, so I mostly kept quiet and tried not to attract attention. In seventh grade I had four different teachers for my four main subjects who stuck with us through eighth grade. My science teacher was so incompetent at keeping the class on task and respectful of her that it frustrated me. My English teacher was a guy with a ponytail who was nice but made us write way too much. My social studies teacher reminded me of a cheerleader, always loud and bubbly, but I liked the way she taught. My math teacher was such a nice lady but I hated math which indirectly made me despise her. I could never wrap my head around the abstract concepts of Algebra 1, and I felt like I was asking way too many questions on how to do each problem. I also took chorus, which made me happy because all we did was sing. And I took home economics. The sewing part was awful, but the cooking was great. I did softball, basketball, and tennis between kindergarten and eighth grade and that was fun for me even though I was not exceptional at any of them. Finally, middle school ended but high school was only one parking lot away. Seriously, my middle school and high school were only separated by a tiny parking lot.
It may seem that I pointed out a lot of negative things, but like I said before, my early schooling was mostly a positive experience. I got good grades, most of my teachers liked me, and I made lots of lasting friendships that I still have to this day. Perhaps my retelling is mostly negative because bad experiences are recalled better than good ones simply because it is part of survival to learn from them. A few of my teachers made lasting impressions on me because they genuinely cared about me and put in extra effort to help me understand each concept. The attitude a teacher brings to their students really can be sensed by their students. I feel that if the teachers were not good at teaching or controlling a classroom, it made me not put forward one hundred percent of my effort. Those classes felt like a waste of time, but I learned a lot from my good teachers because they had the skills to keep me engaged and interested in learning about whatever they taught me. The work ethic my teachers instilled in me then has continued to help me and I am sure will help me for the rest of my life. After all, the point of school is to make a dramatic difference in how one conducts himself/herself in the future.
Rebecca Lelli
American Education Honors
8 September 2014
Description of the influence of your early schooling. What do you remember about your elementary and middle school experiences? What did you learn that has had a lasting influence? Who were your most influential teachers and/or caregivers? Why?
I feel that my early schooling, was overall a positive experience. For the most part, I went to school with the same people from kindergarten through eighth grade, which made me feel much more comfortable in some ways, but nervous in others. One downside of going to school with the same kids is if you did something embarrassing or went through a phase in one grade people were likely to make you miserable about it in years to come.) My school district was known to be fairly good for a public group of schools, and I never really experienced learning in another school district because I never moved. Luckily I was always a pretty good student, but I preferred reading,writing, and history to math, science, and technology. Even from a young age I could tell if a teacher hated his or her job or if the person had a natural gift in working with children and going above and beyond to help them succeed. With encouragement from these motivated teachers, I was able to thrive while getting my early education which created the building blocks that were essential to my later education.
I attended Richmond Elementary school from kindergarten to fourth grade, and felt very at home there. In kindergarten I had two senile old women for teachers who were mean and yelled at us for talking. They once made me so terrified that I pretended to be sick to avoid going to school. Another time during recess one of them yelled at me to stand by the wall (as a punishment) when I had no idea what I had done wrong but was too scared to ask. However, besides having teachers who hated children, I liked kindergarten. We played a lot and did more art projects than I could count. In first grade I had a teacher who was young and it was her first year teaching. We began writing and reading more, as well as doing some simple math. I handled the work fairly well. We also got to have library as one of our subjects, which helped fuel my interest in reading. About once or twice a week, the librarian would read us a book she had chosen and show us the pictures, and I was sold. I began reading on my own, not long books at first but anything that had a good looking cover I picked up and read. My competitive nature helped me that year, because I saw my best friend being praised for doing excellent work, and that made me work harder too.
In second grade I had a teacher who was a little snippy but I never had a problem with. She began teaching us multiplication tables and having us memorize our 0-12 times tables. I had a little more trouble with this, but I managed. My third grade teacher loved animals and had tortoises and a few other pets in her classroom. She got me really excited about animals, and interested in science. Once we each got a caterpillar and we watched them over a period of weeks transition from cocoon to butterfly. I loved that teacher, but she pushed us really hard and I began to get stressed out with the workload that was being piled up. In fourth grade I had one of my favorite teachers. She would read to us and draw diagrams of the setting of books on big poster boards. We would have spelling bees and I was rarely uninterested in the class. I was in a special math class in fourth grade, probably due to my poor performance in the previous year. I never thought that it was a bad thing, just that I needed a little extra help. At least until one boy started making fun of us, calling us special needs which hurt my feelings and made me question my intelligence. Was I really stupid when it came to math like he said? And while I never felt like I was good at math later on, I knew it was not stupidity that was the cause. Some things simply come naturally to people, and others require extreme effort.
Once I graduated from elementary school and moved on to middle school, things were totally different. We had to get up earlier and change classrooms when the subjects changed. In fifth grade I received a C in math and I was horrified. I knew I was better than that, so in sixth grade I still struggled but was able to keep my grade at a B. Also, in sixth grade one of my teachers decided that I was her favorite, for what reason I have no idea. But I did not like it because some of the other kids started thinking I was stuck up, so I mostly kept quiet and tried not to attract attention. In seventh grade I had four different teachers for my four main subjects who stuck with us through eighth grade. My science teacher was so incompetent at keeping the class on task and respectful of her that it frustrated me. My English teacher was a guy with a ponytail who was nice but made us write way too much. My social studies teacher reminded me of a cheerleader, always loud and bubbly, but I liked the way she taught. My math teacher was such a nice lady but I hated math which indirectly made me despise her. I could never wrap my head around the abstract concepts of Algebra 1, and I felt like I was asking way too many questions on how to do each problem. I also took chorus, which made me happy because all we did was sing. And I took home economics. The sewing part was awful, but the cooking was great. I did softball, basketball, and tennis between kindergarten and eighth grade and that was fun for me even though I was not exceptional at any of them. Finally, middle school ended but high school was only one parking lot away. Seriously, my middle school and high school were only separated by a tiny parking lot.
It may seem that I pointed out a lot of negative things, but like I said before, my early schooling was mostly a positive experience. I got good grades, most of my teachers liked me, and I made lots of lasting friendships that I still have to this day. Perhaps my retelling is mostly negative because bad experiences are recalled better than good ones simply because it is part of survival to learn from them. A few of my teachers made lasting impressions on me because they genuinely cared about me and put in extra effort to help me understand each concept. The attitude a teacher brings to their students really can be sensed by their students. I feel that if the teachers were not good at teaching or controlling a classroom, it made me not put forward one hundred percent of my effort. Those classes felt like a waste of time, but I learned a lot from my good teachers because they had the skills to keep me engaged and interested in learning about whatever they taught me. The work ethic my teachers instilled in me then has continued to help me and I am sure will help me for the rest of my life. After all, the point of school is to make a dramatic difference in how one conducts himself/herself in the future.